She spelled it for him. “It’s French for shit.”
He went to sign his name, then decided not to. He took the note and his gifts to the row of little wooden cubbies, which served as mailboxes for the performers and stagehands, and slid the offering into the one marked Bianco. Checking his own cubby, he found a short note of appreciation from Leo, and a longer one from Allison Pierce, heavy with exclamation points and smiley faces. He put it politely in his pocket, then nervously checked his offering to Daisy hadn’t inexplicably fallen out of her box in the last sixty seconds.
The dancers performed to a full house. Daisy danced beautifully. Even though she behaved in the Prelude and did a double pirouette at the end of her solo, the audience still gave her a small, spontaneous ovation. Erik didn’t miss any cues, but he watched the ballet program filled with distracted anticipation. He wondered if Daisy had found the gift in her mailbox, worried she wouldn’t know it was from him, then both wondered and worried how he could see her after the concert when he had the whole second act to run and she could just leave.
She did leave. After the curtain came down, and Erik and David had closed up shop, he searched backstage, but she was gone. He stood in the wings a few confused moments, not knowing what to do. He needed a cue here.
He saw Will crossing the stage, his arm wrapped around Lucky Dare’s curvy body. Erik had never worked with a wingman but maybe now was the time. He started walking over, passing by the wooden cubbies, and a flicker of yellow in his own slot made him stop short. He reached in and retrieved the now-empty wrapper from the Swedish Fish. His face filled with swift heat, then it went numb, as if he had been slapped. He didn’t understand. He turned the wrapper over and over, not understanding. Then he looked and saw his own note to Daisy folded inside the plastic bag.
She had eaten the candy, but given the rest back.
She didn’t want him.
With shaking fingers he drew out the paper and unfolded it, re-reading what he had written. Where had he gone wrong? Ten simple, almost stupid words, and she had changed her mind?
He turned the paper over.
A pile of penciled lines on the back of his note. Words jumped out at him. Heart. Happiness. Want. Hands. Whisper. Shaking, Erik pulled back into the privacy of the curtains to read.
I don’t know what to do since I met you. I don’t know how to be since you showed me your necklace and told me about your father. You let me touch some of the sadness you carry in your heart and now your happiness is something I need. I’m looking for you all the time. I want to talk to you about everything.
Who are you? I feel like I already know. Like I always knew. I want to be near you. I was born to be near you. I want to know you in the dark. I want you to look at me with your hands. To talk to me with your body. To show me without words. To trust me with your most secret self while I trust you with mine. I want to feel your smile against my mouth when I tell you things and hear you whisper, “I know. Me too.”
I didn’t know love would be like this. I didn’t know I would love like this. And I want to see you seeing me love you. Like this.
I’m in my room.
If you don’t feel the same, please be kind.
But if you are thinking right now, “Me too,” then please come here, come talk to me.
I need to talk to you.
Right now.
God, I can’t breathe…
Erik lifted up his head and let go the breath he had been holding.
But if you are thinking right now, “Me too,” then please come...
He left the wings, leaped off the apron and ran up the aisle to the booth. Seizing his jacket, he bolted out the lobby doors, out of Mallory and into the icy November night. He ran. Ran for his life. Ran to start his life. Across campus to the south quad, to Daisy’s dorm.
Heart pounding in his heaving chest, he knocked on her door.